


Untitled

by stellarbisexual



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: All budding gay feelings and no clown demons, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Richie Tozier, College, Coming of Age, First Kiss, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, M/M, No Pennywise here, Richie POV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 14:37:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20155213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarbisexual/pseuds/stellarbisexual
Summary: Yes hello I'm trash and could only get one chapter of my Big Bang done by my deadline! Weeeeee. Enjoy this WIP!





	Untitled

For as cold as balls as it is six months out of the year, Derry, Maine sure can get fucking hot in the summertime. Hot and humid. They’re in the middle of one of the most oppressive heatwaves Richie can recall when his parents go out of town for the weekend, leaving him to swelter all by his lonesome. They’ve got window AC’s, but he’d rather beat the heat like this: laying on the kitchen floor shirtless, the windows as wide as they can go, the modest evening breeze rattling windchimes all down the Toziers’ block. He’s been prone here since late in the afternoon, smoking cigarettes and listening to Top 40 radio to his heart’s content. After all, no one’s around to tell him to get up off his ass and get a summer job or wash the dishes or do the laundry.

Or start packing for USC already. 

Richie hasn’t laid in this spot since he was really little--like, five or six--and used to hide from his mom under the kitchen table, grabbing at her ankles once she’d finally walk past. He’d forgotten how much he loves seeing a beloved room from a new perspective, noticing details that never registered before. It transports him back to a simpler time, when the world was bigger and seemingly had everything to offer him. It’s comforting. 

A familiar knock at the door is what finally stirs him, his enthusiasm to stand giving him a headrush that he blinks away on his way to answer. He opens it with a dopey grin reserved solely for the person on the other side. 

“Eds! To what do I owe the pleazh?”

Eddie’s already marching into his house and ripping his backpack off, limbs full of frenetic energy. “Just couldn’t be in that living room with her anymore.”

Richie watches his back as it retreats down the long hall, kicking the door shut behind him. “How’d you get out? Emergency bible study session?”

“Walked right out the front door.” Eddie sounds exhilarated. 

“_ Holy shit! _ ” Richie chuckles. “Did Mrs. K blow a microchip?”

“I’m eighteen. She can go fuck herself,” Eddie retorts, quick as lightning.

Richie crosses his arms, leaning against the wall as he looks his friend over. Eddie hasn’t grown much since middle school. Richie kind of loves it. “Y’know, it turns me on when you’re all rebellious.”

Eddie smacks his arm. “Fuck off.” He nods in the direction of the kitchen. “What’s that?”

“Just the radio.”

He sniffs the air. “You’re smoking in the house?”

“_ I’m eighteen. My parents can go fuck themselves. _”

Eddie blushes and smirks, smacking him again, this time a more playful one with the back of his hand. “Shut up.”

“I’ll put it out,” Richie says, shuffling barefoot down the hall to retrieve the half-done cigarette he left perched atop the ashtray, burning. He spins on his heels, pointing to Eddie firmly. “But only because I love you.”

He busies himself discarding the evidence of his shenanigans, turning on the fan above the stove for good measure. “You packed for the Big Apple yet?”

“Just about.” There’s a brightness in Eddie’s eyes that Richie’s rarely seen before. In it, he can almost see a glimmer of what Eddie’ll become in college--_ who _ he’ll become when he’s free of this shit town. He can’t wait to see it in living, breathing color. “I’m not taking much. Bev’s sending me a bunch of her cousin’s clothes that he left when he moved out of her aunt’s house.” Eddie unzips his jacket, revealing a vintage graphic tee, grey with an old Cherry Coke logo. “Like it?”

“Yeah, that’s killer.” Richie raises an eyebrow. “Cherry, huh?”

“Fucking--” Eddie starts, abandoning whatever insult he had on deck to give a vicious twist to the skin at Richie’s side. 

“_ Ow, ow, ow, fuck! _” Richie’s smile almost hurts his face. He captures Eddie’s hands and pulls him close, tickling his stomach. Eddie protests, of course, but it’s all for show, his body leaning into him inviting more. 

Richie tries to recall when their usual banter and bullshit morphed into this buzzy thing that often feels like flirting but that he’s certainly not ready to label. They might be eighteen but it’s still Derry and he’s not fucking stupid. Neither is Eds. 

He stops tickling, but Eddie remains on his guard, Richie testing the lulls by poking him--until a new song starts emanating from his mom’s boombox on the counter. The _ Baby, I Love Your Way _remake by Big Mountain. 

“Ooh!” Eddie throws his head back with a dramatically ecstatic eyeroll. “I love this song!”

“That’s fucking sacrilege, Eds. Peter Frampton’s rolling over in his grave.”

Eddie laughs. “Newsflash, shithead: Peter Frampton’s still alive.”

“And if he wasn’t, he’d come alive.” Richie makes a high-hat sound. 

“This version’s good too,” Eddie says, grabbing his hands. “Admit it.”

“I will do no such thing.”

Richie expects him to leave it there, but he doesn’t, draping Richie’s arms over his shoulders and urging him to sway with him. Eddie rarely sings in front of people, but he does now, and loudly, in the effort to shatter Richie’s musical snobbery. “_ But don’t hesitate ‘cause your love just won’t wait… ooh baby, I love your way every day. I wanna tell you I love your way, every day. _”

He stops singing just before the line, _ I wanna be with you night and day _, Richie notices. 

Richie gives a put-upon sigh and twirls Eddie. When he pulls him back in, Eddie wraps both arms around his middle. “I’m gonna miss you.”

“Welp,” Richie starts, not missing a beat, “thankfully, there are these devices called telephones. They’re pretty fuckin’ rad.”

Eddie looks comically alarmed. “You’re not gonna write me letters?”

Richie pushes a hand through his hair, fluffing it up and messing it up. “I’ll do whatever you want me to. Even ship myself through UPS if you start to really miss me. But I suspect you’ll be too busy getting into all sorts of trouble without me, making me a proud papa from afar.” 

“You’re the one who’s gonna be too busy, taking in the sun and all the fake boobs LA has to offer.”

Richie looks down at him, stone-faced. “Eds, we’ve been through this: they’re called_ titties _.” Eddie’s nose wrinkles predictably. Richie strokes his hair, more gently this time. “You seriously think I’m not gonna miss you?”

Eddie’s eyes are wide and endless. “Will you call me?”

“Every day,” Richie promises. Then, after a beat, he belts: “_ I wanna tell you I love your way, every day. _”

“I’m _ serious _, Rich.”

“So am I.” He grabs his face and plants a firm kiss to his forehead, making a final smacking sound. Before he can pull away, though, Eddie curls a hand around the back of his neck, keeping him there, their foreheads leaning against one another.

“...Richie?”

“...Yeah?” 

Eddie tilts his head up and kisses him, soft, sweet, and heartfelt. Richie’s heart feels like it’s going to beat right out of his fucking chest. His eyes refuse to open as they pull apart. Eddie whispers against his mouth, “I should go.”

“Why?” Richie whispers back, and it sounds like a plea. 

“My mom--”

“_ Fuck her _ ,” Richie says decisively, pulling Eddie up onto the balls of his feet and kissing him more soundly, urging a breathy hum out of the back of his throat that ignites a fire the pit of his stomach. “I don’t want you to go, not now.”

Eddie stops only to catch his breath before pushing Richie up against the counter behind him and kissing him again. “You taste like cigarettes.” He smiles, breathless, hands curling into the waistband of Richie’s pajama pants. “I should hate it.”

The dam breaks then, their bodies and mouths connecting feverishly, Eddie’s tongue sweeping through his mouth, his hands tugging on his hair, pulling him down at an uncomfortable angle, but he doesn’t give a_ shit _. 

“Fuck, Eds,” he groans, biting at the crook of his neck. “Why are you leaving in a week?”

“Wait,” Eddie says quietly, but Richie chooses to ignore it--until he forcibly detaches his mouth from his neck. “_ Wait. _Wait. I don’t want her to see.”

“Right. Let’s go upstairs.”

“No, Rich, I’m not--”

“We can just keep kissing, just like this.”

“You know we won’t.”

Richie tries convincing him with softer, wetter kisses to his neck. “I won’t do anything you don’t want me to,” he promises. 

“I want to do more,” Eddie says, and Richie’s sure he’s the one who’s just blown a microchip.

“_ Then let’s go do that _,” Richie says, making to physically sweep Eddie off his feet, bridal-style, if for no other reason then to ease the tension a bit, but Eddie protests again, grasping his hands and pressing a firm kiss to his mouth.

“Not tonight. Another night.”

“Fuck,” Richie exhales. “Okay. Okay.”

Eddie finally extracts himself from Richie’s arms with a pitiful whine, lifting his jacket off the back of one of the kitchen chairs and pulling it over his arms. “If I don’t go now,” he smiles, not finishing the sentence, not needing to. 

Richie smiles ruefully, watching him gather his backpack and right his hair on his way back to the front door. 

“I’ll call you tomorrow?”

Richie nods silently, watching as he leaves, wondering what the fuck just happened and what he has to do to get it to happen again.

**Author's Note:**

> Songs referenced:
> 
> Baby, I Love Your Way by Peter Frampton:  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gjWcnJLIZ0
> 
> Baby, I Love Your Way by Big Mountain:  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lOoOOLl-cY


End file.
